The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ. You will have to register before you can post or view full size images in the forums.

Oh geez, better late than never...

Hi, I'm Neurowiz - the guy who apparently skipped right past the introductions and jumped straight into "WTHamIdoing" kinda questions.

I have always, always, wanted to draw. I'm terrible at it. Give me a pen and paper and I can whip out a story, but drawing, I end up looking like a 3rd grader in an earthquake. My stick figures pull themselves off the page and run away in shame.

But I love to try anyway, and as a young lad (heh, I sound so old saying 'lad') I found that some of the best parts of D&D were making maps of twisty passages... many alike.

I tried Dunjinni back in '04/'05, dropped it for awhile, and now that I'm getting back into gaming, and on Linux, I wanted to try my hand at mapping. So here I am, courtesy of Butch Curry who directed me here (his videos are to blame. Yes. All of them. My wife will be emailing him shortly...).

Thanks for the help so far and I look forward to getting good enough to participate in one of your contests. There is truly some magnificent work here and I hope to learn enough on my ancient GIMP installation to get half as good.

I currently use GIMP 2.2 on Ubuntu 6.10. I use a creaky mouse that I want to shoot, but justifying a tablet on top of the other stuff I'm collecting would be a task.

Hi there Neuro! Seems a bit late to welcome you to the Guild since you've made yourself at home here already, but thanks for the brief bio! Butch Curry's mapping video tutorials are excellent. I've been through them all twice!

@ravells - Yea, babbling unfortunately. I looked at my tree pattern thing and said "Man, I am *such* a dork - everyone probably knows this and I posted the equivalent of how to breathe... " but I'm in awe of everyone's ability on here. Figured the best way to learn is jump in.

@neonknight - Your avatar. Have it, I must. I think I'll scan in something from the old blue book box set that I just bought from ebay...

@RobA
Oh, both good suggestions. I *think* I managed to update my Ubuntu with an older enough GTK so that it doesn't break old Ubuntu but it supports 2.4.5 - I have it now running. Man, the brush scaling is a killer and I love the jitter and the support of PS brushes. Now I have to relearn selections...

There are people of all kinds of different skill levels here, and some who may be virtuosos with one package might be complete novices with another, so any and all advice is welcome, no matter how elementary or how advanced.

I am fairly inexperienced with every program, so I find pretty much every tip valuable. So don't ever hesitate to share a technique because you think it's too basic!

now that I'm getting back into gaming, and on Linux, I wanted to try my hand at mapping.

I just started trying in earnest to create maps for a new PathfinderRPG campaign (you might call Pathfinder "D&D 3.6", since it's an OGL game picking up where 3.5 left off rather than trying to emulate video games and collectible card games the way D&D 4.0 is doing). I'm in sort of the opposite circumstance from yours, though -- I've been using FreeBSD for some years, and Linux (mostly Debian) for some years before that, and have been playing D&D since a decade or so before there was a 2nd Edition, but only started playing with digital gameworld cartography, um, yesterday.

Originally Posted by Neurowiz

I currently use GIMP 2.2 on Ubuntu 6.10. I use a creaky mouse that I want to shoot, but justifying a tablet on top of the other stuff I'm collecting would be a task.

I'm using GIMP 2.4.5 myself. I should probably look into Inkscape as well, but I'm somewhat comfortable with GIMP, and not so much with Inkscape, so I guess I'm not likely to give that a go for a while. It shouldn't be difficult at all to move up to GIMP 2.4.x on your Ubuntu machine, as long as you have a broadband (cable or DSL) Internet connection. You might want to consider moving up.

I don't know that I'll ever get a tablet for cartography purposes. My ultimate aim is to come up with ways to create maps that look good without having to do any actual "drawing" to speak of.

Anyway . . . just figured I'd post something in your introductory thread here, since we seem to have some things in common with what we're doing (open source OS, open source image editing tools, no tablet, new to this stuff in some way).

@Midgardsormr - I 'grew up' in the hoary ages of Usenet - there was a method and manners to posting questions/techniques. I'm always leery of the audience and besides, I didn't want to see presumptuous. Making trees is hard for me, but maybe it's just me. LOL...

@Neonknight - Oh that's great! I've managed to score a box with the original chits. The box has crushed edges, but when I reopen the blue book, much squeeing will be had.

@apotheon - the issue with upgrading was that the Ubuntu 6.10 repos have been closed to updates for awhile. And while I can download/configure/make/install, my worry was updating the underlying gtk libraries and other libs. I don't fully grok ldconfig/so's so well, and trying to add the new libs so I could compile/install 2.4.5 was giving me the heebies - I couldn't just uninstall the old libs without uninstalling 3/4s of my other programs. Fortunately, no grue has eaten me or my install, so things seem to be going OK with the update- although I still wonder if the old libs are coexisting OK with the new. I'm happy with the stability of 6.10, so I've not upgraded the base OS in awhile.

I haven't looked at Pathfinder, I'm still trying to catch up to how complex 3.0/3.5 is. That's why I love microlite20 - you can use the SRD and the stuff in it, but you're not involved in the complexity. I'm curious to see what happens with 4.x.